Complete weird tales of.., p.959
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 959
“It leaves me utterly indifferent,” she said disdainfully; but her gray eyes were lifted slowly to mine and the color came into her beautiful face.
“What sort of man are you!” she demanded. “You see how young my sister is — how silly and inexperienced! And yet — —”
“I’d as soon kiss a healthy kitten,” said I. “She’s attractive because she is your sister. Anyway Smith is in love with her — —”
“I won’t permit it!” cried Thusis. “I’ll not tolerate such a thing!”
She clenched her hands; there was a glint of something in her eyes — but if it came from angry tears they dried before I was sure.
“I’ve brought this on myself,” she said. “I laid myself open to it — invited familiarity and disrespect from you! The very devil must have been in me to so utterly forget myself! Now I’ve got to pay for it — pay for it in bitter humiliation — witness such a scene as I have just witnessed — and then stand here and hear you tell me that — that you are in love with me! — endure what you say — —”
Suddenly it became clear to me what Clelia had meant when she said that Thusis was afraid of me.
“Thusis,” said I, “you won’t have to listen to any more of that from me. I shall not tell you again that I care for you. And anyway, in a little while it will no longer be true. Because I shall get over it.”
She looked up.
“And I want you to know that I am not angry. And even if I were I want you to understand that you need not be afraid of my resentment.”
“I am not!” she flashed out.
“You are! You are afraid that I might be the sort of creature to revenge wounded amour propre by proving faithless to the confidence you gave me. Don’t worry,” I added angrily, “because I’d cut my tongue out or face a firing squad before I’d utter one word to anybody concerning what you told me about your mission here.”
There was a silence. Then Thusis’ smile came back, a trifle tremulously:
“You silly boy!” she said. “Did you think I was afraid of that!”
“You say that, in my case, noblesse oblige means nothing to me.”
She blushed scarlet: “I was angry — hurt. I did not mean that.”
“You meant it.”
“I did not! I tried to believe I meant it. I knew it wasn’t true. I knew it would anger you; that is why I said it.”
“Then why are you afraid of me?”
“I?”
“Yes, you, Thusis.”
“I am not. I am afraid of nobody.... Except ... myself.”
She looked up at me again, flushed, lovely, and her gray eyes seemed distressed.
“It’s just myself, Don Michael,” she said with a forced smile. “I seem changed, different, — and it alarms me — scares me — to find myself capable of behaving so — so imprudently — with you.”
“Thusis!”
But she had passed me in a flash and I heard her light feet flying up the stairs. I followed. She was at the top of the staircase, but heard me and turned on the landing to look down.
“My behavior with you mortifies me!” she repeated in a hurried whisper. “Why do you follow me, Michael?”
“Do you have to ask me, Thusis?”
“You mustn’t ever again pursue me,” she repeated in a low, breathless voice.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because — possibly I couldn’t run as fast as you can. Do you think I would endure it to be overtaken? Do you suppose I could tolerate being run down and caught? By you? Can’t you comprehend that such a thing is unthinkable?”
Again that slightest hint of contempt in her voice, not entirely recognized yet vaguely divined.
I said slowly: “If I really understand, Thusis, then you need not worry. Because I shall never again take a single step in the world to follow you.”
She seemed to consider this very deeply, standing on the landing and looking down at me out of her beautiful and serious eyes.
“Suppose,” she said, “that you do follow me — not very fast — just saunter along — so that I need not run?”
She did not smile; neither did I.
“Would that be agreeable to you, Michael?”
“Would it be agreeable to you, Thusis?”
“Yes, it would.... Please don’t come upstairs! Does it give you any pleasure to scare me and see me run?”
I had one foot on the stairs; and let it remain there.
“When I say saunter, I mean it, Michael. Just stroll around — in my vicinity — describing a few leisurely circles — so that I’ll not notice your approach. Couldn’t you do that — and keep within sight?”
“I’ll try.”
Suddenly her eyes grew brilliant and she smothered a laugh with her hands. Then, as both palms clung flat to her laughing lips she deliberately kissed them and, with a pretty gesture, threw the reckless salute at me.
“Your humble servant, Don Michael!” she whispered, “your housekeeper salutes you — and runs!”
Which she did, vanishing like a flash of sunlight in the dusky corridor.
I dropped one hand on the newel-post quite unbalanced by a complexity of emotions which no experience in life had so far taught me to analyze and catalogue.
“It’s probably love,” said I to myself, calmly enough. “And what the devil am I to do about it?”
There was no answer. Reason, instinct, emotion, appeared to be paralyzed.
So I climbed the stairs in a blind, mechanical sort of way, and went into Smith’s room.
“Were you ever in love?” I asked wearily.
He laid aside his novel, unhooked the pipe from his mouth, and considered me very gravely.
“Yes,” he said, “I’ve been in love.”
“What did you do about it?”
“The wrong thing, I fancy.”
“What was that, Smith?”
“I took the matter too seriously.”
“Shouldn’t one?”
“Never!”
I nodded, blankly.
“To be too seriously in love, and to show it,” said Smith, “is disastrous to a man. It won’t do, Michael. Unless our sex takes it gayly and good humoredly we’re patronized. Take it from me, the solemn side, the fasting and prayer, must originate in the other sex. It never does if we betray such symptoms. They always wait to see whether we’ll break out. And when we do they treat us as though we were sick — kindly but condescendingly. You get me?”
“Vaguely.”
“All right. But here’s the other aspect: when we fall in love, and say so, and then take the object of our vows gayly, amiably, and with perfect good humor always — no matter how inwardly we doubt and fear and rage — then, Michael, the girl we worship becomes very, very serious — even ponderous at times — and if she’s got any brain at all it gets busy and remains busy. And what preoccupies her mind are questions concerning whether or not you really do love her seriously enough; and, if not, whether she can make you do it, which state of intellect causes perpetual anxiety and chronic uncertainty. And only when these emotions perpetually preoccupy a girl, can she finally fall in love with you sufficiently to forget what an ass you really are.”
“Smith,” said I, “are you in love with Clelia?”
“Yes, damn it,” he said serenely.
“Then why don’t you practice your theory on her?”
“My theory,” he replied, “is the result of my experience with Clelia. That is how I came to evolve it. I believe in it, too. But it’s too late to try on Clelia. Because already she has my number, Michael, and she knows me for a solemn, single-minded, and serious ass, very, very deeply in love with her. She’s on to me, Michael.”
I remembered my episode with Clelia and considered it for a while in silence. It was apparent to me that the girl’s affections were completely and healthily disengaged. Her desire for happiness, her almost pagan love of gayety, her sheer delight in the mere joy of living, were not unmoral. And if, in her pursuit of pleasure there seemed something feverish, reckless, that was explained by her odd idea that she had but a little while to live.
“No use to argue, explain, reason, or preach to that girl,” said I. “The thing to do is to give her a jolt.”
“A jolt?” he repeated. “There’s nothing left for me to say or do that could disconcert that girl. She knows I’m in love with her; she knows that I have lived a morally decent life, that my high ideals concerning women have never been lowered, that, to me, love is a sacred — —”
“You tried to kiss her sister.”
“That,” he said, reddening painfully, “was my only lapse from the rigid conservatism of a life-time. And doubtless I am now suffering from that moment of relaxation into folly — —”
“Doubtless you are not!” I returned. “I am certain that Thusis never mentioned it to Clelia. And I’m sorry she didn’t because it might have furnished the required jolt.”
Smith became gloomily interested.
“A jolt,” I repeated, “is what starts things. Clelia requires one. All you need is nerve to administer it.”
“How?”
“Why not frivol with Josephine?”
“Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “A man can’t get gay with a girl like that! You might as well try to two-step with the Statue of Liberty! You might as well play the Doxology on a jazz band! You might as well give a burnt-cork show on the Acropolis! You might as — —”
“Calm your alarm,” said I. “That girl, Josephine Vannis, is rather an overwhelming beauty, I admit. But it’s just those big, handsome, impressive, monumentally magnificent girls who fall for some little squirt — —”
“Who the devil do you mean!” he demanded, hotly.
“I don’t mean you. But you are shorter than she is; you don’t weigh as much. Get a move on you! Inject pep into yourself. Become witty, gay, degagé, inconsequential, brilliant, light-hearted, bristling with quips and epigrams — —”
“Who? I?”
“Certainly. Pull yourself up short. Eliminate every moral instinct. Drink more Moselle than you ought to. Hook arms with that brace of kings down stairs and pull your hat over one eye! Then, after you’ve been the life of the dinner-party, drop into the kitchen and bestow a few repartees on Josephine. And if Clelia isn’t shocked I’m a boche!”
“I can’t do all those things,” he said uneasily.
“You can try.”
So I left him a prey to conflicting emotions, and entered my own room and sat down on the bed.
“I’m in love,” said I to myself, “deeply, inextricably in love! And what on earth am I to do about it!”
XI. A PYJAMA PARTY
ABOUT MIDNIGHT I was awakened from agreeable slumber by somebody knocking at my bedroom door. I leaned out of bed, switched on the electric light, got up and opened the door.
King Ferdinand stood there in night-shirt and bare feet holding a candle that shook like an aspen leaf in the darkness.
“Somebody’s been trying to open my d-door,” he stammered. “I want you to come in and help me l-look under the b-bed. Not that I’m n-nervous or af-f-fraid, b-b-but I d-d-don’t want to be d-disturbed.”
“You say you heard somebody trying your door?”
“Yes, I did. I never sleep well and when I sleep at all I sleep lightly. I heard it p-p-plainly, I tell you.”
I smiled. “It’s a windy night,” said I. “Doors and windows rattle.”
“Yes, but the wind can’t turn the knob on your door!” he insisted, his eyes of a wild pig roving nervously about my room. “I don’t like such things, and I want you to come and look under my bed.”
“Very well,” said I, “let us go and look under your bed, Monsieur Itchenuff.”
The Tzar of all the Bulgars was not an agreeable spectacle in his night-shirt and enormous bare feet. His visage was pasty, his eyes had a frightened, stealthy restlessness like a wild thing’s that hears and scents an enemy but has not yet perceived him.
So wabbly was the lighted candle in his large fat hand, that I was afraid he’d set fire to his night-shirt, and relieved him of it.
“We have our own dynamo here,” said I. “Why didn’t you turn on the electric light by your bed?”
“It wouldn’t work,” he replied. “Do you suppose somebody has c-c-cut the wire?”
“Who?”
“God knows! Everybody has enemies, I suppose. You wouldn’t believe it, Monsieur, if you knew me well, but even I am affected by enemies.”
“Impossible!” said I, looking at him askance as he waddled along bare-footed beside me.
“Nevertheless, I assure you,” he complained in a voice unctuous with virtuous self-pity, “I, who have never harmed a fly, Monsieur, have secret enemies who would d-destroy me.”
Again I glanced sideways at this Bulgarian assassin — the murderer of Stambouleff, and of God knows how many others.
We came to the door of his dark bedroom and I went in with the lighted candle. First I examined the electric fixture.
“Nobody’s cut your wire,” said I. “The globe’s burnt out.”
“Does that seem at all suspicious to you?” he asked in an agitated voice, coming up behind me.
I smiled. “That happens daily as you must know.” I got down on my knees and peered under his bed. Of course there was nobody there. Nevertheless he got down on all fours and took the candle to examine every corner. Then, puffing, he reared up, shuffled to his flat, splay feet, and went about peeping into closets, behind curtains and sofas, moving from room to room in his suite with a stealthy flapping of his bare feet on the parquet.
Meanwhile I went around trying the several electric switches. It was odd that all the globes should have been burnt out at once. Evidently some fuse in the cellar had blown out.
There was another candle on his dresser. I lighted it. And, as it flickered into yellow flame, something on the floor of the dressing-room beyond caught the light and sparkled. And I went forward on tip-toe and picked it up.
The Tzar of all the Bulgars was busy searching the sitting-room. Now, satisfied that there was no intruder concealed about the apartment, he waddled massively back to where I stood.
“All the same,” he said, “I heard the knob of my door squeak.”
“There are no robbers in this region,” said I with a shrug.
“Monsieur O’Ryan,” he said solemnly, “you may not know it but I am a very important personage — person, I mean — that is,” he explained hastily, “I am important in a business sense. And I have many envious business rivals who would not hesitate to follow me secretly from Berne and attempt to possess themselves of any — papers I might carry — in hopes of obtaining business secrets.”
I said nothing. He stood on one leg, rubbing one shin with his large, fat toes, and his little mean eyes roaming everywhere.
“You should have brought a servant or two,” I suggested.
“No, no, not this time,” he said hurriedly. “No, this is just an — an informal little p-pleasure trip with friends — the Xenoses — quite — er — al fresco — sans façon, you see. No, I didn’t want servants about.” He shot a cunning glance at me and checked himself.
So I shrugged, showed him how to double-lock all his doors, bade him good night, and went back to my own room, trying the corridor lights on my way. None of them worked.
“There’s no fuse blown out,” thought I to myself, staring at my own bedroom light which burned brightly and which was controlled by the same switch.
Then, locking my door, I took out of my pocket the small bright object which I had picked up in Tzar Ferdinand’s dressing-room.
It was a silver filigree button from the peasant costume of Thusis.
Of course she had probably lost it sometime during the day when airing the suite. Untidy little Thusis!
I dropped onto my bed still holding the silver button in my closed hand. Presently I touched it, discreetly, with my lips. And fell asleep after a while — to dream that the Bulgarian and the Hohenzollern had cut off my hands at the wrists and were nailing them to my front door, as happened, I believe, to Major Panitza.
About three o’clock I awoke in pitch darkness, all quivering from my dream, and heard the wind in the fir-trees and the slam of a heavy shutter.
For a while I lay there hoping the shutter would stop banging. But it did not. Then I tried to locate it by the sound. And after a while I decided that it must be some shutter on one of the windows overhead.
The servants’ quarters were there. I didn’t exactly like to go up and hunt about. But the racket was becoming unbearable; so I rose again, got into slippers, trousers and dressing gown, and went out along the corridor. It was pitch dark, but I decided not to go back and hunt up a candle because I could follow the strip of carpet and feel my way to the service stairs.
And I was doing this in a blind, cautious way, and was just turning the corridor corner with groping arms outstretched, when, with a soft and perfectly silent shock, somebody walked into them.
Such a thing is sufficient to paralyze anybody. My heart missed like a flivver out of gear, then that engine started racing, and my arms mechanically and convulsively closed around that unseen thing that had collided with me.
“W-who the devil is it!” I said shakily, as a shocked gasp escaped it and the thing almost collapsed in my terrified embrace.
Then, as I spoke, my half-stunned wits awoke; a faint fragrance grew on my senses; the yielding ghost in my arms came to warm life, and two hands clutched at my imprisoning arms.
“Michael!” she panted.
“Great heavens! Thusis!” I faltered.
Freed, she leaned against the corridor wall for a few moments in palpitating silence. I also needed that interval to recover.
“What on earth is the matter, Thusis?” I managed to whisper at last.
“N-nothing. There was a shutter blowing — —”
“But it’s on the floor above! It’s on your floor, Thusis.”
She was silent for a moment, then: “What are you doing — prowling about the house at this hour?” she demanded.
“In my case,” said I, “it was the shutter.”
“Very well. I’ll go up and fix it, and you may go back to bed.”
